Thinkpads Forum

Bombarding the forums once again

I got this T510 a few days ago and from day 1 I noticed there was a pretty daunting issue with it. It sometimes instantly powers off while charging the battery. This happens when applying some load to it, but also, very inconveniently, while going through a battery reconditioning. I've immediately figured out there's three suspects: the AC adapter, the mainboard (please let it not be the mainboard) and the battery, which is higly unlikely since I used it in my now-HalfPad T430 a few years ago without any issues.

Unfortunately troubleshooting is a bit difficult for me since I don't have any other usable systems that take this style of battery, but I might just go to the guy who sold me this unit and get a more beat up W510 too, just to check. While I'm there I might as well get another AC adapter lol. He's selling both them and the machines for really cheap.

The reason i'm making this thread is to ask if anyone has ever been in the same boat as me, and if so what was your solution? I really hope it's not a mainboard replacement!

And to add a bit more info, this doesn't happen while the machine is running exclusively on AC adapter or the battery, only while charging. It doesn't happen when a fully charged battery is in the system while it's plugged in. I've seen a few ancient Lenovo forum threads about this or a very similar issue, but no clear resolution. It apparently happens on the T410 and maybe even T400 and T500s too.

what is the wattage rating of the charger? if this occurs with 65W then perhaps a 90W or better charger will alleviate the issue?

is the laptop overheating? sudden power off may be triggered due to triggering thermal safety. these first generation Arrandale dual cores are hot heads.

Make one of these: viewtopic.php?p=680106#p680106
And test that battery in many different laptops.

TPFanatic: it's a 90W AC adapter, I forgot to mention it. The first thing I did when I got it was to replace the thermal paste, now when running YouTube it never goes above 60-62 degrees Celsius. I've yet to do any actual stress tests on it but when I do I'll report the results.

RBS: yeah I've seen that thread, only getting the interposer by itself for a reasonable price is impossible where I live. I could of course hunt for a 15" T60 but why gimp a machine if it's fully functional? I will test it in my T430 but that won't present an accurate load scenario since the only panel I had for it died a while back, and panels ofc are a big factor when it comes to power consumption.

OK so after an hour and 40 minutes of the machine being on AC only and running Prime95 with the panel brightness at its highest it's still not powered off, and the CPU temperature never went above 75 degrees. One thing I should mention is that the AC adapter gets excessively hot not only while charging the battery with the machine on but also with it fully powered off. It really does sound like it's at fault.

After all this, you still have not told us if that T510 has integrated or discrete graphics.
And if if you have a 65W, 90W or 135W AC adapter.
Did a previous owner put a different AC-plug on it and maybe swapped L and N wires?

It's an Intel only unit, the reason I always forget to mention it is because most of the ThinkPads I get come with iGPUs so I'm not accustomed to even think about it.
Using a 90W AC adapter. The machine looks brand new and there's no signs anyone opened it ever besides me, what do you mean by L and N wires? It's an interesting connector that goes to the motherboard, I can assume the reason for having two wires instead of only one for all connections is to have better current throughput? Also what's the middle pin for? On Dells it's used to communicate the AC adapter's rated wattage.

Oh wait live and neutral is what you're talking about! Just clicked. No, the AC adapter hasn't been tampered with. If it was there'd have to be some marks from the previous owner's attempts at opening it.